8 am Sunday Sept. 5 - slept 10-6 no problem; as before, AC on all night and still sleeping with no shirt on Well, I was not asked to speak after all at last night's dinner - kind of a letdown since I was ready to start in Arabic briefly, continue in Indonesian briefly, and then talk a bit in English.The first speaker pointed me out when I walked into the auditorium and was asked to sit up front, and the 'official' photographer took way too many shots of me fro...

Finally in Indonesia: first impressions and experiences, September 4 2010 On August 31 I arrived in Medan for a 2-night stay at the Marriott so that I could get my in-country orientation at the US consulate.After 36+ hours of no sleep I was tired but not exhausted, and was happy to go along with the new Medan English Language Fellow, Jonthon, to his university to meet teachers/students and join in a 'buka puasa', the evening meal to break the Ramadan daily fas...

I've returned to Albuquerque from the big all-English Language Fellow orientation in D.C. The best parts of it for me were literally seeing that I'm part of a sizeable world-wide 'mission' of some significance, and meeting/beginning to form a connection with at least some of the other Indonesia ELFs.It's frustrating that we will only see each other a couple times after Jakarta; there are at least a couple whom I'd like to get to know better.I did not get to mee...

Two weeks from now I'll have just arived in Jakarta for an in-country ELF in-country orientation. Next week I will be in Washington ( hence the photo ) for the big orientation for all ELFs - I'll meet the other Indonesian ELFs and staff and get a lot of questions answered, I'm sure. Not a lot has happened since I last wrote. Only a few days ago did I finally get the key authorization form from the Indonesian Ministry of Religious Affairs that I needed in or...

It's been five weeks since I accepted an offer from the US embassy in Jakarta to become an English Language Fellow at an institute in Palembang on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, starting in late August and continuing for ten months.Since then I've been absorbing lots of information sent by the office of the Regional English Language Officer in Jakarta, a bit from the English director at the school where I'll be teaching, and much more that I've found on my o...